My Best Friend
by Charlie Bird
Summary: This is a story about a boy and his dog. The boy's name is Ryan, and when this story starts, Ryan doesn't know about the dog. So, for the sake of accuracy and literary device, we won't name the dog yet. [For Blink Week]


A/N: Gah! I think I managed to post this just five minutes before midnight. For those who don't know, today is the end of Blink Week, a weeklong contest dedicated to fics about Blink. It's in honor of B (studentnumber), because it's her birthday (HAPPY BIRTHDAY) and because she's awesome (it's true). I'm glad I managed to hammer something out for this in time. Even if it's not great, I had fun writing it, and I hope you enjoy reading it!

Disclaimer: I own nothing but the original characters. Don't steal them, unless you have my permission. If you have my permission then you're welcome to steal them.

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**My Best Friend: A Story**

This is a story about a boy and his dog. The boy's name is Ryan, and when this story starts, Ryan doesn't know about the dog. So, for the sake of accuracy and literary device, we won't name the dog yet.

Well, 'we' is actually just 'me,' Nick. Unless you count Ryan, who's my best friend. I guess he could count as part of the 'we,' since he knows how this story ends too.

I'm going to rephrase that first sentence. This is a story about _two _boys and a dog. Or maybe I should say "This is a story about a boy and his dog and his best friend," but that's kind of a run-on, and our English teacher, Mr. Denton, says to avoid run-on sentences, so I'll just stick with the way I started off anyway, I guess.

This is a story about a boy (Ryan) and his dog (Unnamed). Also featured are the boy's best friend (Nick), the boy's mother (Mrs. Ryan's Mom), a really nice guy who sells puppies (Bill), and a creepy real estate agent (Mr. Deller-Hamilton).

Now I'm going to do descriptions of the characters. I should probably start with Ryan, since he's the main character. Okay, so, here's Ryan:

Ryan Louis Ballatt is my best friend. He has blonde hair, blue eyes, and an eye patch. He likes baseball, dogs, grape popsicles, summer, and swimming. He makes kind of good grades, but he wouldn't if I didn't let him copy my homework sometimes. Ryan is a very nice guy. He is always friendly, unless you wake him up too early, because he's always grumpy in the mornings (I know from too many bad experiences at sleepovers. Trust me.)

The first thing that most people notice about Ryan is his eye patch. There are a lot of gruesome things I could tell you about what's behind the eye patch, but Mr. Denton says that you should write what you know, so I'll just tell the truth. When Ryan was six, his dad went kind of bonkers, and started throwing plates at Ryan and his mom. One of the pieces of the plates hit Ryan's eye. He can't see out of it anymore, and it's all sort of milky colored, and there's a scar that goes from just under his eyebrow to right below his eyelid. Ryan's dad was always a little crazy, but this time it was really bad, so Ryan and his mom finally left. They went to a battered women's shelter, which is where they met my mom and me.

I guess the truth is a little gruesome, but it's the truth, so that counts for something.

Ryan and I were the only boys our age there. The other boys were all older, and they never let us play with them, so I guess that's how we became friends. My mom and Ryan's mom both got jobs working together at a real estate office, and so they decided to move into the same apartment building (but in different apartments), and they brought us with them, obviously because we're their kids.

That's who Ryan is. Who I am is pretty simple: Nicholas Malcolm Meyers, age 12 and four months. I have medium-brown skin, medium-brown eyes, and medium-brown hair which is curly. I guess I am generally sort of medium-brownish. I like most of the same things as Ryan, but I also like tap-dancing and basketball. Ryan is really bad at basketball (and tap-dancing), but I'm not very good at baseball, so we both sort of make up for each other. I make mostly good grades except in French. I am also mostly friendly. Ryan and I are basically each other's only friends, but if there was someone else around that I wanted to be friends with, I wouldn't be afraid to go up and be their friend.

The first thing that most people notice about me would probably be the fact that I'm not white. Actually, the apartments around mine are mostly filled with people who aren't white (except for Ryan), but the thing is that I'm not black either. I'm a little of both, and even though I've never really cared and neither has Ryan, a lot of people seem to think that it makes me weird.

I guess that's another reason Ryan and I are friends. We're both "different" in the "special" sense of the word, so even if there was someone who we wanted to be friends with, they might not want to be friends with us. Luckily Ryan and I don't really need a lot of other people.

The third character is Beatrice Anne Ballatt. She goes by Betty. I call her Mrs. Ryan's Mom, because she doesn't like it when I do that. She's told me, like, a million times to just call her Betty, because Ryan calls my mom Debbie (which is actually my mom's name), but even Ryan sometimes calls Betty Mrs. Ryan's Mom, or Mrs. My Mom, partly because it's funny and partly because I think Mrs. Ryan's Mom likes it.

Mrs. Ryan's Mom is really cool. She can be kind of scary sometimes when she's angry, and she's not afraid to tell you what's what, but she's also really nice. If I didn't have my mom, I'd want Mrs. Ryan's Mom to be my mom. I don't think she'd mind.

Like I said before, Mrs. Ryan's Mom works at a real estate office as a receptionist. My mom used to work there, but then she got a new job at the library near our house, and she liked the hours better, so she works there now. But Mrs. Ryan's Mom still works at the real estate office, which is called Deller-Hamilton Real Estate.

The owner of the office is Mr. Deller-Hamilton. He sells people houses in the country. He is very rich, very handsome, and very obnoxious. He likes to show off how much money he has – my mom and Mrs. Ryan's Mom would always talk about that. So when Mr. Deller-Hamilton started bringing Mrs. Ryan's Mom flowers all the time, we all thought it was just because he was showing off again.

And then Mr. Deller-Hamilton asked Mrs. Ryan's Mom out on a date, and four months later Mrs. Ryan's Mom was just about set to become Mrs. Deller-Hamilton.

Ryan and I did not like this, and neither did my mom, who still says that Mr. Deller-Hamilton is no good (and she's right). The three of us would always gather in our apartment (my mom's and mine) when Mrs. Ryan's Mom was out on a date, and talk to each other about how much we hated him. Mom would talk about how he was only ever nice to the pretty secretaries and how he was a misogynist. I would talk about how annoying his voice was and how much I hated his stupid ties and his slicked back hair. Ryan would talk about how he hated the way Mr. Deller-Hamilton treated him and his mom.

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The first time Mr. Deller-Hamilton came to pick up Mrs. Ryan's Mom at their apartment was the first time I met him. Ryan came over to my apartment at a little after six o'clock and said "Mr. Deller-Hamilton is coming to pick my mom up in ten minutes! What do I do?"

I told him I didn't know. Then we hid out in my apartment for a little while (my mom gave us peanut butter cookies). After that we heard some voices coming from Ryan's apartment, so we peeked out of the peephole, and that was when I first saw Mr. Deller-Hamilton.

I guess I'll describe what Mr. Deller-Hamilton looks like. He is very tall, and very skinny. He has a long, pointy nose, and it has a little bump at the very top. He has dark eyes, and long eyelashes. He always wears very nice clothes. His hair is always slicked back and kind of greasy looking, but that might just be the gel (it's black hair, by the way). He's pretty good-looking, I guess. He must be because women like him. He's got nice features, but his personality is not nice at all, and the way he moves is really creepy. He doesn't even walk, he sort of glides and slithers.

That was my very first impression of Mr. Deller-Hamilton. We watched as Mrs. Ryan's Mom let him into the apartment, and then we followed.

Mrs. Ryan's Mom said, "Hello, Nick. Hello, Ryan."

I said, "Hi, Mrs. Ryan's Mom," and she rolled her eyes at me.

Then Ryan kind of elbowed me in my side, and I elbowed him back, and we stood there giving each other the elbow until Mr. Deller-Hamilton cleared his throat, and stuck out his hand.

"Hello again, kid," he said.

Ryan looked at Mr. Deller-Hamilton's hand for a couple seconds before he shook it. Then Mr. Deller-Hamilton held his hand out to me.

"Hello," he said. "You must be Nick. Betty has told me a lot about you."

"Really?" I said as I shook his hand.

He said, "Yes. And about you, Ryan."

Ryan and I looked at each other.

"Well," said Mrs. Ryan's Mom, "we should probably get going if we want to arrive at the theater in time." Then she said to me and Ryan, "George is taking me to the theater! Isn't that exciting?" (George is Mr. Deller-Hamilton's first name.)

Ryan and I looked at each other again. Neither of us thought that the theater was exciting at all, but Mrs. Ryan's Mom was really stoked, so we sort of nodded.

"Sure, mom," said Ryan. "Have fun." Then he turned to Mr. Deller-Hamilton. "Don't keep her out too late," he said.

I looked around at them. Mr. Deller-Hamilton looked shocked and very disdainful. Mrs. Ryan's Mom look embarrassed, but kind of amused too. Ryan looked very serious. I tried to keep from laughing.

Eventually Mr. Deller-Hamilton nodded. "Don't worry, kid." He and Mrs. Ryan's Mom started to leave. As he was about to close the door, he turned around and said to Ryan, "I'll get her home in time to read you your bedtime story."

Ryan looked like he wanted to punch Mr. Deller-Hamilton when he said that. I kind of wanted to punch Mr. Deller-Hamilton too, even though I don't like punching people. That was a really mean thing of Mr. Deller-Hamilton to say, because what kind of twelve-year-old listens to bedtime stories anymore? That just shows how much Mr. Deller-Hamilton knows about Ryan (nothing), and how much he knows about kids at all (also nothing).

Another annoying thing about Mr. Deller-Hamilton is that he almost never calls me or Ryan by our names. He just calls us 'kid,' or 'you'.

That night was probably the fourth or fifth time that Mr. Deller-Hamilton and Mrs. Ryan's Mom had gone out on a date. The next time they went out, they brought Ryan with them. He didn't want to go, but Mrs. Ryan's Mom told him that he was going and that was the end of it. He even had to put on a tie. I saw them all right before they left to go eat a fancy dinner, and Ryan looked really miserable. His mom had slicked back his hair just like Mr. Deller-Hamilton's. He looked all wrong.

When he came back from dinner, he told me that Mr. Deller-Hamilton and his mom had spent all night talking to each other, and they ignored him the whole time. Me and Ryan and my mom talked about how weird that was, because usually Mrs. Ryan's Mom and Ryan are pretty close, and it's not like her to just exclude him like that. Ryan seemed pretty upset, so we had the first of our many discussions about how much we hated Mr. Deller-Hamilton that night. Before Ryan left, my mom said to just give it some time. Mrs. Ryan's Mom would come to her senses eventually.

* * *

Unfortunately, that night wasn't the last of the "We Hate Mr. Deller-Hamilton" chats. Ryan started spending more and more time at our apartment, because it seemed like his mom was _always_ out with Mr. Deller-Hamilton, or even worse, Mr. Deller-Hamilton was having dinner at their place again!

The final straw came after about three and a half months when Mrs. Ryan's Mom hurried over to our apartment right before Mr. Deller-Hamilton came to pick her up. She and my mom had a whispered conversation. My mom seemed kind of angry, but she agreed to whatever Mrs. Ryan's Mom wanted. Then Mr. Deller-Hamilton picked her up, and my mom told Ryan that he'd be spending the night with us.

We knew automatically that something was weird, because Ryan never even asks if he can spend the night. He just does it, and I do the same thing. We live right across the hall, so it's not like our moms couldn't get to us if they needed to.

We knew it was weird because my mom seemed all firm about it, like Ryan wasn't allowed to even go back to his apartment.

It was getting really late, and Ryan was being all weird. He went back to his apartment to get pajamas, and when he came back he looked scared.

"My mom isn't in the apartment!" he told me. "It's really late. Where is she?"

We figured it had to have something to do with why Ryan had to stay with us tonight, so we went and got my mom, and asked her. She finally told us that Mrs. Ryan's Mom had asked her to let Ryan stay with us tonight because she knew she wouldn't be home and she didn't want Ryan to be all alone.

"But why isn't she going to come home tonight?" Ryan asked.

My mom wouldn't answer that, and just said, "You'll understand when you're older." Both me and Ryan hate it when adults say things like that.

When Mrs. Ryan's Mom came back the next morning (more like the next afternoon) she seemed really happy, and by then Ryan and I knew that whatever it was that was going on between Mr. Deller-Hamilton and Mrs. Ryan's mom, it was serious.

About two weeks later (three days before Ryan's thirteenth birthday), Mr. Deller-Hamilton and Mrs. Ryan's Mom asked Ryan how they'd feel about all of them moving into one of Mr. Deller-Hamilton's houses in the country.

I don't know what happened that night, but I know it wasn't good, because Ryan came over to our apartment and he was almost crying. Ryan doesn't usually cry, so that's how I know that whatever happened was really bad. He couldn't even talk to me about it until the next day.

Ryan's birthday that year wasn't a lot of fun. Mrs. Ryan's Mom insisted on inviting Mr. Deller-Hamilton to the party, which was at the batting cage near the bowling alley. Everyone who was there (me, Ryan, my mom, Mrs. Ryan's Mom's friend Lisa, and two kids from Ryan's and my school) felt really awkward around Mr. Deller-Hamilton, and he didn't exactly do anything to make us feel better.

About halfway through the party he took Ryan aside, and handed him a piece of paper. Then he gave Mrs. Ryan's Mom one of those really gross open-mouth kisses, and left. Ryan showed me what the piece of paper was. It was a blank check. Mr. Deller-Hamilton had showed him how to write in the amount of money, and he told Ryan to go to the mall and get anything he wanted. He told Ryan to get something that he couldn't have in an apartment, something really big that would fit into his new room in Mr. Deller-Hamilton's country house.

The next day Ryan and I went to the mall. We looked around at all sorts of things that were really big and expensive. I told him to get a basketball hoop, so that we could play basketball when I came to visit him, but he didn't really want it. There were some nice computers at one story, but Ryan wasn't very enthusiastic about those. We almost got a big screen TV, but then we realized Mr. Deller-Hamilton probably had one of those already.

We went to a real estate office to see if maybe we could buy our own country house to show Mrs. Ryan's Mom that she didn't need Mr. Deller-Hamilton, but I guess neither of us realized how expensive those houses actually are.

Ryan was looking really depressed and discouraged, and I was getting pretty upset too, because we couldn't come up with anything that he wanted. We were just about to go look at the video games in the computer store when we passed a store called Bill's Pets and Pet Supplies.

Ryan started laughing when he saw it, because he'd forgotten to tell me that Mr. Deller-Hamilton is afraid of dogs. On the night when Mrs. Ryan's Mom and Mr. Deller-Hamilton told him they were moving, they'd passed a dog walker in Central Park, and Mr. Deller-Hamilton freaked out. One of the dogs started barking at him, and Ryan said that Mr. Deller-Hamilton looked like he was ready to climb a tree to escape.

Then Ryan and I got a really evil idea at the same time. We looked at each other and grinned and I could tell we were thinking the same thing, because we do that sometimes.

We went into the pet shop and met Bill, the owner. Bill asked us what we were looking for, and we told him we wanted a dog. He asked what kind of dog. We said "Really big, and wild, and expensive."

Bill looked a little suspicious, and asked why we wanted that kind of dog in a city like this one. Ryan and I looked at each other again, and he shrugged at me like "What can it hurt?", so we went ahead and told Bill about Mr. Deller-Hamilton and our evil plot. Bill started laughing and laughing and told us that he had just the dog.

He led us over to a circular pen, and showed us a little yellow puppy. Ryan and I said we didn't think it was big enough, but Bill said that we shouldn't worry, this dog was going to get quite big in time. Bill also told us that no one else wanted him because he wasn't house-trained and was very rambunctious. Bill said we could play with the puppy if we wanted. We knew right away that he was the one we wanted when he tackled Ryan and started trying to eat his ear.

We must have played with the puppy for an hour before we were finally ready to leave. Ryan wrote out the check and gave it to Bill. We were going to take the puppy right away, but Bill said there might be a better way to go about it. He asked us a little more about Mr. Deller-Hamilton, and then told us his idea. We agreed that his way would work better, and would be a lot more evil. Ryan and I said goodbye to the puppy, and to Bill, who wished us good luck, and then we left to go home.

* * *

For the next three days I helped Ryan pack his stuff up and we thought about names for the puppy. In between that, we helped my mom try to convince Mrs. Ryan's Mom that moving was a really bad idea and that Mr. Deller-Hamilton was no good.

I think everybody was pretty sad during those three days. I was sad because my best friend was moving away. Ryan was sad because he had to live with Mr. Deller-Hamilton. My mom was sad because her best friend was moving away too and also her best friend had to live with Mr. Deller-Hamilton. Mrs. Ryan's Mom was sad because none of us liked Mr. Deller-Hamilton.

I don't know how Mr. Deller-Hamilton felt.

Finally the time came for most of Ryan's stuff to be moved to Mr. Deller-Hamilton's country house. He and his mom would come back to spend one more night at their apartment before they moved for good.

All that night I waited by the phone, hoping that our evil plan had gone well. Before I knew it, Ryan was ringing our doorbell, looking really excited, and bouncing up and down.

He started talking as soon as we let him in. "It went perfect!" he said. "Mr. Deller-Hamilton asked me what I bought myself at the mall, and I told him it was being delivered later. Bill came by at four o'clock, and handed the puppy right to Mr. Deller-Hamilton! He got all scared and started shrieking like a little girl! And then I came out of my room – which is really big, by the way, but I hate it – and the puppy was all happy to see me, and Mr. Deller-Hamilton was still shrieking, and my mom and Bill started laughing, and I told Mr. Deller-Hamilton to meet the newest member of our family."

"What did he say?" my mom asked (she was laughing too).

Ryan couldn't stop smiling. "He locked me and the puppy in my room. And then he and my mom started yelling, and he said he wasn't going to allow a dog in his nice house, and my mom said that he cared more about the house than he did about me and my happiness, and he said that wasn't true, but it really is, and so Mr. Deller-Hamilton said that it was either get rid of the dog or get out of his house, and my mom grabbed me and some clothes and stormed out."

"So you don't have to live with him?" I said.

Ryan looked sad for a moment. "Actually, I think we're still going back tomorrow. My mom might make me get rid of the puppy."

"Where is it now?" I asked.

Ryan said, "Bill took it again. And he and my mom started talking a lot about it. And me, I think, because they kept looking at me while they were talking. We were on the subway though, so it was noisy, and I couldn't hear."

"I think your mom should go out with Bill," I said.

Ryan and my mom started nodding, even though my mom hasn't met Bill.

Ryan ended up staying that night at our house. My mom went over to talk to Mrs. Ryan's Mom for a few hours, and she didn't come home until really late. The next morning Ryan and Mrs. Ryan's Mom had a long talk.

It turned out my mom had been right. Even though it took a long time, Mrs. Ryan's Mom did come to her senses. She told us all that she realized she and Mr. Deller-Hamilton had been rushing it. She said she'd been blinded by his wealth and his good looks, and she hadn't noticed that while she was trying to create a new life and a new family, that her old life and her old family had been slipping away.

Ryan and his mom moved their stuff back into their old apartment. Unfortunately we can't keep dogs in the apartment, so Bill offered to keep the dog for us for a while. Ryan and I go over to visit him every afternoon.

One day we were walking there with my mom (who really likes to visit the dog, for some reason, only she always spends all the visiting time talking to Bill instead), and Ryan told me he finally decided what to name the puppy.

I asked him what.

He said, "George."

I said, "Isn't that Mr. Deller-Hamilton's name?"

Ryan nodded and grinned at me, and I grinned back, and I could tell we were having evil thoughts at the same time again. We spent some time with George the Puppy that afternoon (and of course my mom ignored George the Puppy and talked to Bill), and later we sent Mr. Deller-Hamilton a picture of George the Puppy. We wrote on it, "Meet George! He may not be house-trained, but he sure is friendly!"

We never heard back from Mr. Deller-Hamilton. He broke up with Mrs. Ryan's Mom, and she lost her job at the real estate office. Ryan felt pretty guilty about that, but she told us we had nothing to worry about. She found another awesome job, and every now and then she joins in when we have "We Hate Mr. Deller-Hamilton" chats, just for old time's sake.

Anyway, that's the story of my best friend and his dog. I guess the dog didn't end up playing that big of a part, but he's growing really fast, so maybe someday I'll have to write him his own story. This story has a mostly happy ending, though it would have had a happier ending if Ryan and I got to keep George the Puppy. But I wanted to tell the truth because the truth doesn't always have a happy ending (and sometimes it doesn't need it). I guess I learned that the prince isn't always charming. The princess doesn't always end up as the queen, and usually she doesn't have a son until after the "happily ever after".

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Once again, a very happy birthday to you, B.

Please review!


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